


to your own blood, and empty spaces in the throat

by vellaphoria



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Mostly hurt, Norse Funerary Traditions, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Endgame, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Somewhat Nonlinear Narrative, Spoilers, Updates:, chapter one lightly jossed as of endgame, everyone is a mess, now has a second chapter, thor centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-30 10:03:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14494548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vellaphoria/pseuds/vellaphoria
Summary: Silence suffocated the battlefield in the wake of Thanos’ ships.It fell from the sky they had rent in their flight from Midgard’s surface, and it rose like mist from the forests they had left broken in their wake.It settled in Thor’s lungs, collecting in the cracks of his armor like ash....Before the events of Endgame. And what happened after.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You said you would not go away again,
> 
> You did not want to go away – and yet,
> 
> \- ‘The Evening of the Mind’ by Donald Justice (excerpt)

Silence suffocated the battlefield in the wake of Thanos’ ships.

It fell from the sky they had rent in their flight from Midgard’s surface, and it rose like mist from the forests they had left broken in their wake.

It settled in Thor’s lungs, collecting in the cracks of his armor like ash.

Even the heaviness of his footsteps was muffled by it as he picked his way across the clearing. Stormbreaker rested loosely in his hand, wet where Thanos’ blood had run and slackened his grip on its haft.

The last of his lightning flickered across it, drawn from beneath his skin and behind his eyes. From his very bones, even as they ached with a familiar emptiness. He stopped where Banner stood, as War Machine emerged from the woods to join them, something haunted inherent in his stance.

Rogers knelt before them, spine bent and hands shaking as the ashes of his friend slipped through fingers that trembled too hard to grasp.

Thor did not step close. Each warrior must mourn in their own way, and the rest of them would give him what space he needed, while they could. They would not have long.

“Steve,” War Machine, started, worry straining in his voice.

Rogers looked up from the ashes. The muscles of his neck stretched tight enough that Thor was struck with a passing worry that they might be torn asunder. His eyes were heavy with unshed tears.

“Sam. It… it took Sam.”

“Oh god,” Rogers gasped, quietly enough that Thor suspected the rest of them were not supposed to hear. His hands closed on the ashes, clutching as they filtered through like sand.

“Wait–” Next to Thor, Banner had begun around frantically, anxiety brimming in his tone. “Where is…”

Behind them, the trees shuddered and Romanov crashed out of the brush with the ferocity of one of the Valkyrior summoned to the field of battle, only to come to a sudden, halting stop as she beheld the scene before her.

Banner sighed in relief, air passing thick and heavily through his lungs, but she barely even acknowledged the three of them where they stood.

Rogers sat up straighter, staring at her until she took a single, halting step. And another, until she stood beside him and, without a word, sunk to her knees. Her touch on his arm was light, but as surely as if she had pulled him forward, he leaned into her, burying his face in her shoulder. She let him, and the care with which her arm came up around him was so unlike what Thor knew of her that he felt as if he had committed a grave trespass simply by witnessing it. He averted his gaze.

In the distance, a cry rose up. It was chased by several more. They broke the silence, and the rising, pleading sound of the newly mourning bolstered to an all-encompassing, hollow wail. It echoed across the plains, between the trees and all the ash-covered ground between.

A woman walked towards them, dressed in red, with the bearing of a leader. She leaned heavily on her weapon, borne down by injury and a sorrow churning beneath her stoic expression. She stepped past the fallen, dulled body of the Vision, and the ashes that lay pushed up around it, almost clinging.

“The King is gone,” she said, without preamble. Her voice was composed and so even-tempered it could not have been anything but forced. “Come. We must prepare.”

 

**…**

 

In the hours and days that followed, they gathered the dead that were left to them.

There was not much to be done for the ashes.

Wakanda’s Queen Mother – a woman of balance and grace who wielded power so deftly that the sight of her struck at an older sense of loss, settled tight against Thor's bones – called upon the land’s warriors and their families to identify the fallen, and upon others still to begin their final rites.

The aliens were moved into great, looming piles and burned without ceremony.

They sat, afterword, in a half-circle backed by the quinjet. They did not speak, for Thor suspected none of them knew what to say.

It was merely the beginning, in some ways. In the days to come there would be plans to be made, strength to be gathered. They must locate Stark, if he yet lived, and begin to determine how they might fix this, or if there was even a glimmer of hope that it _might_ be fixed.

Or else they must determine how to end Thanos’ pathetic life, if it could not.

Many battles lay before them; looming, but distant. They knew what they must do, yet none among them had posed a viable strategy of getting there.

The way forward lay clouded, hidden by the fog of war.

The way back had closed long before the battle had even begun.

Half of them were wanted criminals in multiple sovereign nations for … some reason. Thor had perhaps not been paying attention when Rogers had explained it to him.

Yet the impasse remained; they could not go home any more than the Lady Sif could have once Loki exiled her. Any more than Thor could have, though Midgard lying whole and half-populated rankled him, even if he would not be so uncouth as to voice the thought.

Their half-circle dissipated soon after, each of them departing to find what peace they could in action.

Banner had been the first to leave, trekking out towards the city with the stated intention of locking himself in Wakanda’s labs to assist the Princess – a young woman of terrifying intelligence – if she would have him.

Romanov was soon elbows-deep in the quinjet’s internal machinery. _Trying to make contact_ , she said, muttering to herself as Rogers looked on over her shoulder in an illusion of helpfulness. That she let him do this at all spoke volumes to the depth of her concern.

War Machine – one of Stark’s compatriots, if Thor remembered correctly. Though he had not yet learned his name – alternated between sitting guard, pacing, and looking over his shoulder even when his back was to one of the quinjet’s walls.

The small rabbit had disappeared, but to where, Thor was not certain.

For lack of anything more constructive to do, he settled for something distracting. Stormbreaker swung easily as he hefted it on his shoulder, making to walk straight out of their makeshift camp without a word.

None of them attempted to dissuade him, and in bloodied, ashen flatlands lit by piles of burning corpses, he began to train.

As a prince of Asgard, he had been instructed in the use of every weapon his people had conceived over the millennia. Considering the length of the average Æsir lifespan and the more martial aspects of their society, this was indeed a great many weapons.

In the axe, he was proficient, though he had always preferred heavy, blunt weapons before.

This did not matter.

Thor unearthed every form and half-remembered drill from the recesses of his mind. Hours passed, and soon his body began to remember millennia-old training like a long-forgotten song. It left him standing, panting with exertion as the Wakandan mountains swallowed the sun and the fires burnt low, bodies turning to ash and carried away by the wind.

Those who wished to had already gathered the ashes of their fallen, but it was impossible to find every piece, given the nature of their remains. Before long, what was left behind would mingle with the burnt remains of their enemies, sullied by circumstance and the environment’s whims.

Thor had not been close to those who were now gone. But his teammates’ grief at their loss weighed heavy on him, a dull, echoing ache of his own pain.

Within him, lightning crackled through his veins, licking across Stormbreaker’s edges and urging him to action. To _what_ action, he did not know.

They did not know where Thanos was. He had freed himself from Thor’s axe and snapped his fingers without a second thought, disappearing far beyond reach. His ships and armies had left the moment half of Midgard’s – of the _universe’s_ – population turned to ash.

There was no immediate enemy who might be used to rally their sorrow to anger, no great foe to rise against in vengeance.

What was an Avenger without a means by which to avenge?

Still, the lightning crackled. Even without the Bifröst, Stormbreaker’s innate power could take him anywhere. To the other side of Midgard. To another realm entirely. Even empty space, if he so chose.

He could let it carry him to where Asgard yet burned and cast himself upon Surtur’s wrath until the giant managed what Hela and the power of a dying star could not.

He could try to find Jane, for largely the same effect.

Yet in the end, he did none of these things. He lay flat on the shattered Wakandan ground and stared up at the vast endlessness of the cosmos until one of the former Avengers – he did not quite grasp who, at the time – found him and led him back to the quinjet.

He found he could not sleep. None of them could sleep, and there was no need for the taking of watches when they all sat, sullen and unsleeping, staring out into the darkness as the stars wheeled overhead.

 

**…**

Wakanda – as Thor had been told this place was called – was a marvel among Midgard’s cities. Great glittering spires rose up, containing technology closer to that he had been accustomed to on Asgard than anything Thor had seen in the realm before.

The sight of it pulled at his chest, longing tightening in wrought iron bands across his heart with every morning he woke to see its buildings rising up, illuminated by the rising sun. It was these mornings that, for just a moment, he fooled himself into believing he was home.

This was not a pleasant feeling.

Three days after the battle, he could not take it anymore. With a quick word to Rogers that he would return within the day, he walked out to the ashes of their enemies’ corpses and held Stormbreaker aloft. The mark of his travel might have scorched the ground behind him, if it wasn’t already too blackened to discern the markings.

Thor did not choose his direction. Instead, he followed the axe’s pull and let it carry him wherever it seemed to think he needed to be.

He did not know if it was relief or exhaustion that he felt when he found that the axe did not return him to the ruins of his childhood home after all.

It brought him somewhere worse.

When Thor’s senses returned to him – fading from the rainbow glimmer of the Bifröst’s power – he was in space. Surrounded by stars and distant nebulae, he found himself perched on the edge of a great piece of metal that looked to have been torn from the rest of the ship in a line of jagged spikes.

The ruin of Asgard’s final hope floated around him, cold and uncaring, suspended in a void of nothingness.

Though the Æsir were capable of breathing in open space, that did not imply that any given member of the Æsir _should_ breathe in space. And while Thor had done this recently to restart Niðavellir, it was different when there was nothing to distract him from his shallow, airless gasps beyond a vague, angry sorrow.

The piece of metal he had landed on was at the very edge of the wreckage – far enough away to see the true damage Thanos had wrought.

It had only been a scant few of Earth’s days since the massacre, and already there was so little left.

Space was incomprehensibly vast. And for the most part, it was empty. It did not follow the same laws as Asgard, Midguard, or any of the other realms Thor had visited. The remains of the ship had not been spread and separated by currents or winds, but they had been picked clean.

All realms have their scavengers; busy, vile creatures that lurk in the hush following battle, ready to take what they might from those who could no longer stand and defend it.

Half, Thanos had said.

But there was no half in the vacuum, in the cold. Doubly so for peoples’ of their ship who could not breathe in the nothingness as easily as the Æsir.

Thor could not tell if the bodies among the wreckage accounted for half his people and half the gladiators from Sakaar who had provided their final salvation.

In space, there was no open air for bodies to be exposed to, no way for them to truly decay. But scavengers – be they pirates or the hungry, spacefaring creatures that lurked in the darkness between stars – did not respect the dead. And there were bodies, true, but not the ones he was looking for. He saw those that he, as their leader, had known by face. He did not see any he had known by heart, and it shook him to his core.

The attack had come too swiftly to organize a defense. In the chaos, he had not seen what became of Brunnhilde or Korg and the other gladiators. He had not been on the ship long enough to know if it its escape pods had been jettisoned before Sakaar or if they were simply indistinguishable from the rest of the alien technology. Thus, it was but a small, feeble hope that they had managed to survive, but Thor would cling to it all the same.

But for those who had perished before his eyes? For Heimdall? For Loki?

Later, he would not be able to say when he started or when he stopped, but when the rage abated and the tears finally came, the wreckage was unrecognizable and Thor was left, shaking, kneeling in the spot where Thanos had killed his brother, though no evidence of the act remained. Not even ashes.

Thor had faced Death. He had felt the power of a star forced through him until it charred his bones and blistered his skin. He had wielded not one, but two weapons holding the heart of Asgard’s power in their metal.

Asgard was not a place, but a people.

Now, it wasn’t even that.

 

**…**

 

When he finally returned, Midgard was as he left it; choked by a quiet terror, grasping for something that was missing. Not lost, for that would imply it could be found.

The Wakandans had steeled themselves against the pain of it. They mourned, true, and the final rites of their people lasted long into each night, but by day they were industrious and focused in a way that Thor was unsure he could echo.

When his mother had died, he had sought solace in his father and his friends. In Jane. In Loki, even, when he had found him curled in on himself in his cell, the veneer of his illusions dissipated enough to see the ruin of his brother that lay beneath.

Now, he had –

He had the other Avengers. They were wrapped in their own, quiet sorrows, but they understood. Not on the same level, perhaps – half of Midgard remained, after all – but it was an understanding nonetheless.

On the evening of Thor’s return, Colonel Rhodes disappeared into the city, practically dragged there by the Princess after one of the Dora Milaje had seen him doing the exercises that Rogers had told Thor would help rehabilitate his legs. Rogers followed, saying something about checking on Banner.

Romanov remained, trying, still, to repair the quinjet’s communication array. In Thor’s time away, she had gone stoic and quiet, her face nearly as blank as it had been when they first met at the Battle for New York.

The battle his brother had orchestrated.

He and Romanov had never been particularly close. But they had fought together in war and drunk together in peace and, at least in the ways of Asgard, that was enough. He sat with her in silence as the mask she had slipped back into grew a single, hairline fissure that, to most people, would have been almost invisible. To those who had fought with her, it was as coming upon someone weeping uncontrollably.

“I can’t fix it,” she said, almost beneath her breath. “Wakanda has the most advanced technology on Earth and _they_ can’t contact the rest of the world, so why did I even–”

Thor was not Rogers. He was not Barton, either, though if he were he might have known what to say. The way Romanov let the torn-up wall of the quinjet hold her up, staring hollowly at something beyond the hull, was disconcerting. Especially for one Thor had always seen as so collected.

So when she asked him to use Stormbreaker to take her to Barton’s farmhouse, he agreed in an instant. And, when they found no bodies, but no ashes either, she gripped his forearm with a strength no mortal besides Rogers should rightly have.

He raised the axe again. And again. They visited every shared safe house, every emergency meeting location she and Barton had built over the years of their partnership. They found nothing, in the end, and almost a day had passed when he returned her to where the quinjet was grounded.

His sense of loss and unease was reflected back in her demeanor, and it numbed them both to the anger Rogers’ words had adopted to hide his fear. He hugged them both, almost tightly enough to bruise, and told them under no uncertain circumstances that if they left once more without notifying him, he would kill them both himself.

Thor thought Rogers had been spending too much time around Romanov, perhaps. But she only gave him a tight, forced smile and dragged him out to spar. Thor would join them later, perhaps. If the need to strike something returned, or if they seemed to be coming a bit too close to killing one another with their blows.

There was nothing left to do but to wait. To train. To do anything that might distract from the yawning void that had opened in all of them, stretching wide and deep beneath Thor’s bones.

Though Rogers had procured several sturdy vessels from the city and collected the ashes of their fallen teammates within them, they had not buried the Visions’ body. Though some among them had argued vehemently for it, in their hours of bitter strife. Without unanimous assent, it remained in the Princess’ lab.

Thor would admit he did not readily understand the technology that had created Vision, nor what the Princess had done in her attempt to preserve him. It was one of her projects now, he had learned, to see what she might salvage. To see if Vision might be returned.

But from what Thor had been told of his relationship with the woman in red from Sokovia – _Wanda_ , Rogers had whispered on one of those quiet, sleepless nights – he was not certain Vision would _wish_ to be returned. But such judgments were not Thor’s to make, and he suspected that the Princess and Banner worked late into the night for the same reasons that Rogers and Romanov were attempting to beat each other to bloody pulps. Or that the small, strange rabbit returned moments later, clutching shards of broken wood that he set about inexplicably yet methodically planting in Wakanda’s fertile soil.

The same reason why, after making his intention to depart clear, he began to walk.

Thor passed by the ceremony for Wakanda’s fallen, giving a wide berth to the mourners and their colorful, elaborate clothing. He passed through the battlefield, but found that he could not bring himself to train.

Instead, he followed the barrier until he found an area guarded by one of the Dora Milaje.

She looked skeptical at first, but when Thor explained what he was looking for and what he planned to do, she pulled a single bead from her bracelet and typed a command into the interface that floated above it. She let him through the barrier without comment, except to tell him where his walk might be most fruitful.

As he passed her, her eyes were shadowed with loss, and if Thor wondered if she had elected to stand guard here – for he could see no strategic advantage to the location – to avoid the night’s ceremonies, it was not his place to ask.

With the barrier behind him, Thor walked.

The plains gave way to forest, and the day gave way to night, and still he walked. Until his legs ached half as much as his heart and trees ended abruptly at a shoreline he could not see the end of. The dark, starry blaze of the night sky hung low above a lake so large it stretched to the horizon.

Thanos’ ships had collected around the barrier, landing where they might allow his troops to attack with overwhelming numbers. But it seemed that at least one of them had not; it had landed farther out, next to the lake, though Thor could not determine what reason it might have had.

The ship had not remained, in any case. Only the quiet, decimated section of forest; a tangle of tall, majestic trees laid low and trampled into the ground.

It was just as the warrior had said.

The closest of the fallen trees was wide and old. When Stormbreaker cut into it, separating trunk from root, the wood was strong and many-ringed. It had fallen recently enough to still be supple.

An enchantment inherent in Eitri’s design would keep the axe sharp in perpetuity, but Thor’s hands itched for a whetstone all the same.

The wood spilt lengthwise beneath the axe’s head, and soon the tree was reduced to long, thin pieces. He did the same to the tree that had fallen second-closest to him. And after that, the next.

He was not certain how many he would need, only that it would not be enough.

On Asgard, there had been those who studied their entire lives to perform his people’s funerary rites. Entire teams of people who prepared the ships of the dead, for even immortals may be killed. They had built such a ship for his mother. He had thought someday they would build one for him.

To die in battle was a worthy end, and even now, even after Asgard had turned to ash and it’s people had been slaughtered at the hands of his sister and a madman, it must be honored. Properly.

And Thor may have been the last of his people. He may have been the only one who remembered them, and the only one to whom any of this ancient, archaic rite would even _matter_ , but he would honor it all the same.

He would honor _them_. Their lives. Their sacrifice.

Beside the darkened water, he took each split log and stripped it of bark. Stormbreaker’s blade sent it curling away from the wood in wide, spiraled strips, and, before long, the pile of prepared wood stood nearly to Thor’s waist.

Next, it fell to Thor to begin the task of carving each piece down into even planks.

The work would be difficult. It would be tedious. It would take far longer than a single night. But Thor threw himself into it with the single-mindedness of his training, and he poured his grief into each sliver of wood that fell away.

With each slide of his axe, he mourned for his people who had been proud and bright and had winked out of existence as easily as if they had been a flame smothered between Thanos’ fingers.

He mourned for his father, whose death had been followed so closely by Hela’s attack that he had had no time to grieve. For Fandral, Hogun, and Volstagg; dear friends who he had not been there to stand with when they died with the rest of Asgard’s warriors, defending their home. For Sif, wherever her exile had carried her, though he did not know if she was alive or dead. For Brunnhilde, too, who shared Sif’s unknown fate.

For Heimdall, who had saved so many, so often, only to meet his end saving one more.

For Loki, his treacherous, brave, _foolish_ brother and the way his eyes had been clear and fierce, searing into Thor’s vision like a star gone supernova.

_I assure you, brother, the sun will shine on us again._

He had bowed in false supplication, his dagger hidden behind his back as he had readied himself to play the trick that ended with Thanos’ hand tight around his throat.

Odinson, he had called himself, just before the end.

_Odinson_.

 

**…**

 

His brother had fallen.

_Let go_ , a sick, insidious voice whispered in his ear, soft and silver-tongued.

There was no body. Yet, even as Thor sat frozen on the shattered edge of the Bifröst, the realm made a show of drowning itself in mourning. He stared into the abyss that had swallowed Loki whole while Asgard’s artisans – wood workers for the hull, weavers for the shroud, and as many weapons smiths and jewelers as could be contracted – worked in tandem to build a graceful, gilded ship.

Odin had insisted, driving them forward with an iron will. Only the best for Asgard’s second son; he would depart with the trappings of a _warrior._

Under the All-father’s guidance, they draped the boat in green silks. They filled it with strong weapons and good ale.

But there was no love in it. No care.

Of course there was not.

Loki had died as a traitor to two peoples and a vicious, petty king. Already, Thor heard the whispers his people spoke in when they thought they were safe around the prince who had never learned to listen. They had not even laid him to rest, let alone held his _sjaund,_ and already the people called him a monster. A tyrant. A cautionary tale about the dangers of frost giants and men who could weave illusions as easily as any trained woman.

Thor pretended not to hear. Even in his grief, it would not do for the crown prince – the _only_ prince, he had to keep reminding himself – to cause a scene. His mother would be so disappointed.

But Loki was Thor’s _brother_. His –

Before the funeral, he asked to see the ship. By Æsir law, no one could deny the dead’s kin this right, least of all when they held a hammer crackling with lightning before their tear-streaked face and insisted that the dead _was_ their kin, heritage be damned.

The attendants let him pass.

With him, Thor brought a small satchel. Not much, not nearly so much as his brother was owed, but what could be spared without dire censure.

By the weapons – heavy, blunt things that Loki would have taken one look at and laughed so hard that they couldn’t see how hurt he was by how much they didn’t _know_ about him – Thor placed a set of small, sharp knives. They were silver and finely wrought; he had planned to give them to Loki for his next nameday, but this would have to do.

By the ale – _I prefer mead, you imbeciles_ – he tucked books: thick, heavy volumes on Loki’s favored forms of seiðr _._ The subjects were so advanced that Thor could barely make out their titles, let alone understand their contents.

He left before anyone but the attendants could notice. Before Odin could admonish him for disturbing the balance of grave goods.

By the time he rejoined the remainder of his family, somber and waiting on the edge of Asgard’s shore, the boat had already begun its procession. It was golden and glittering beneath the stars, and though there was no body, Loki’s shroud fluttered in the wind, its folds catching for just a moment long enough to trick Thor’s eyes into thinking he was really there.

It had been Loki’s first death. Thor had not yet learned to be wary, to doubt what his eyes told him to be true.

He strangled his tears as Æsir decorum required. Later, in his own chambers, he would cry until his eyes stung and throat was worn raw, but for the ceremony he forced himself to keep a stoic face for the warriors in his command. For Fandral, Hogun, and Volstagg who had not cared for Loki, and for Sif who had hated him.

For his father, who stood more blankly than Thor could force himself to be.

For his mother, whose lips moved unconsciously as she traced seiðr in glowing runes that hung in the air before her. Spells of protection, and wards against evil.

Thor watched her out of the corner of his eye as Loki’s boat departed, ever closer to the edge of Asgard’s waters. He hoped her magic would be enough to bear his brother’s spirit, if not his body, on into Valhalla.

Loki had slipped. He _had_ to have slipped, since those who took their own life fell within the purview of Hel with the dishonorable dead. With those who died of sickness or old age or any number of ways that were not glorious enough to grant one who had died a place in the mead-halls of the end times. Those in Hel would not be summoned at the end of all things, when Yggdrasil was devoured at its roots and Ragnarök fell upon them.

Loki had slipped, and Thor would see his brother again even if he must parish in battle first to do it.

Thor raised Mjolnir high above his head, and when lightning struck the boat, it sent a shower of sparks skittering across the waves. They seemed as wings, almost, as Odin struck the haft of Gungnir on the ground, and with a resounding _clang_ the boat rose up, sailing straight from the edge of the water and into the star-flecked emptiness of the universe.

(Thor would see Loki again. He would see him again and lose him twice more. He would face a thousand challenges and stay standing, unable to meet his glorious end and Loki.

Loki was not dead. But Loki had not slipped.)

 

**...**

 

Grief was a strange thing. Stranger still, since he had felt this grief before.

Thor worked late into the night and early into the next morning. He worked until his hands blistered and his eyelids grew heavy. Until he could no longer put off going back, unless he wished Rogers to make good on his promise and attempt to murder him after all.

Though promise was empty, as he discovered when he returned to camp and was greeted only by Rogers’ solemn nod. His lip was split and he favored his left leg, but he did not seem overly bothered by his injuries.

Nothing catastrophic had happened in Thor’s absence.

So he returned to the lake the next night, and the next.

He came back every afternoon, every evening he could be spared. This was not as often as Thor would have liked, trapped as he was between the team’s trips to surrounding towns and villages to help out when they could and the fraught, explosive arguments that broke out between them when they couldn’t.

The fights were not new. Their severity was.

When Thor had first joined the Avengers, when it had only been the six of them occasionally living in Stark’s ridiculous tower, the yelling and near-brawls had surrounded petty, little things:

Who had finished the coffee yet had not bothered to make more? Barton, most likely, though Stark had always been a viable contender on that count.

Who had left paints and charcoals all over the western observation deck again? Rogers, inevitably, but Banner had been known to join him when the Hulk began to stir.

Who had left Mjolnir somewhere troublesome, be it on top of paperwork or in front of Stark’s bedroom door, conveniently preventing him from accessing the rest of the tower? That had been Thor, of course, though he had no memory of ever knowing precisely _where_ Stark’s room had been. Though when he had asked, wondering how his hammer had gotten somewhere he had no recollection of being, Romanov had only given him a strange, sharp smirk, the meaning of which Thor had very deliberately avoided discerning.

But these fights were different. They were not petty, but cruel; born of too many unanswered questions with no solutions in sight. Thor was certain they would have gone their separate ways long ago, if any of them could have stood to be alone as Midgard shattered and split around them.

A quiet apocalypse, Banner had called it when Princess Shuri eventually managed to establish contact with the outside world. The images had spread through Wakanda like wildfire, and more than one of Thor’s teammates began spending long hours in the Princess’ labs trying to reach their contacts and determine exactly how much of the world had survived the sudden loss of half of it.

Thor remained personally invested in the fates of a few of Midgard’s mortals, but found his courage insufficient to face those who had made clear his continued presence in their lives would be unappreciated. Unwanted, even.

Instead, he gave Romanov a list. Three names, given and family for each, with a quiet request that she make inquires into their wellbeing. Or lack thereof, as may very well have been the case.

She raised an eyebrow at the last one, mouthing ‘Foster’ to herself as if it were familiar but she could not quite recall who it belonged to. As if the likes of Nick Fury and Natasha Romanov had not had their years of collected research into each name on that list memorized to the letter.

As a courtesy to him, Thor imagined, she feigned ignorance.

At least she feigned it well.

With a final, knowing look, he made his excuses and began the long walk that would return him to the lake.

When he arrived, the sun had passed its zenith and begun the slow descent to the indefinite seam where sky and lake became nearly indistinguishable. The ship’s partially completed hull stood before him, dry-docked and waiting for the labor of Thor’s hands.

Building this sort of ship was an art older than Thor. Older than his father, almost. And though the Æsir had had little use for non-spacefaring craft, they had long used it in their funerary rites. They had even taught it to their supplicants.

In his youth, Loki had spent more than a few years in Midgard’s north, showing the peoples of seaside villages how steam might bend a single piece of wood into the keel of a ship. He taught them how to build up from it, each plank of wood overlapping with the next, fixed in place with iron nails.

The ships they built would be fast and light, good for exploring or raiding. The perfect vessels to bear their warriors unto battle, or farther, unto glorious death.

Thor had helped, when the mood struck him. But he had never had Loki’s skill for it, or quite the control over the seiðr his brother had employed when the mortals hadn’t been looking.

Over time, he had worked the mess of fallen trees into the planks that now made up the half-completed hull. Some designs were larger, meant to accommodate ships and sails, or to travel on the open ocean. But it had been centuries since Thor had last lent his efforts to this sort of project, and he found he now lacked the ability to construct a ship as large as he would like.

He doubted he would have the time, either, as with each passing day, the team ranged farther and farther from Wakanda’s borders, helping the relief effort.

So the ship was not overlarge; it was long enough, perhaps, for two Æsir of average height to lie head to foot, and once finished, it would be wide enough that were Thor to lie in it, he could extend his arms nearly halfway before they hit the sides. He had made no allowances for a mast or oars, for there would be no need to manipulate the boat’s direction from within it.

He had only just begun his work for the afternoon when, without warning, Rogers stepped out from the tree line and onto the shore.

Thor glanced up from where he had begun readying another plank, staring a silent challenge at Rogers to question what Thor was doing, or why. Or, perhaps, _for whom_.

Romanov had likely voiced her concerns to him, and he had taken it upon himself to, as the rabbit had said, “be the captain.”

Thor was not certain he understood what that meant, as in his time on Asgard, he had outranked any of their captains in both standing and prowess. In Asgard, a captain trespassing so far as to think themselves close enough in station to a prince to attempt consoling him – it wouldn't have been done, simply. But Thor had learned much of other cultures in recent years and had found that he admired the seemingly easy way some mortals had when it came to discussing their traumas.

He suspected that no avenger – current or former – would quite fit that description, especially now.

But, as Jane had once told him when he expressed confusion over certain Midgardian behaviors, it was the thought that counted.

‘Talking about it’ had yet to help him, but he liked Rogers well enough and he would not turn him away, even if he was not certain he could quite empathize.

There was a difference between being torn from everything you loved but knowing it had carried on in your absence, and being the last of your kind, forced to watch as your people – your friends and family – were slaughtered in front of you.

Yet, Rogers did not demand to know what Thor was doing or immediately try to make him talk about what had happened. He only picked up one of the circular sections of tree Thor had left to the side – nearly as wide around as Rogers’ shoulders were broad, Thor noted – and carried it to the edge of the water to serve as a makeshift seat.

Thor had nearly finished fixing the plank into place by the time he finally spoke.

“I think I read about this once.” His voice was calm and low. When Thor looked up, he could see faint, bruised circles curving beneath Roger’s lower eyelids, darker than they had been the week before. He could count on one hand the number of times any of them had gotten a full night of sleep since the battle.

“That is likely,” Thor said, crossing his work area to begin shaping the next plank, “long before your time, my people instructed many Midgardians in the construction of seafaring vessels.”

For a moment, he wondered if Rogers was going to ask him why he, god of thunder and possessor of a weapon that allowed for teleportation, was building a ship next to a landlocked body of water.

“Would you like help digging?” Rogers asked, instead.

It was not, in truth, a non sequitur.

Not long after Loki had begun teaching mortals, they had adapted their own funerary practices to the boats. For obvious reasons, this had not involved releasing the boats, bearing their fallen, into the cosmic plane.

It _had_ involved ritual sacrifice and burying a boat filled with grave goods beneath a large, demarcated mound of earth. Loki had always found the practice amusing, for some reason.

Thor looked up at Rogers, slightly surprised. He had though the custom was no longer common knowledge.

“The offer is appreciated, yet that is a practice that came about solely on Midgard.”

Rogers nodded, signaling for Thor to continue, if he wished.

And, well. If he spoke on tradition, he would not have to contemplate _why_ he was building this in the first place.

“In Asgard, the overall tradition was similar. The body of the fallen would be laid in their ship, and things they would need on their journey to Valhalla were sent with them. We released the boat into the waters surrounding our realm, and, from a distance, it would be set aflame as a pyre. We did not mourn their loss, but celebrate their life. Honor, glory won in battle, generosity and goodness; these are what must be remembered of the fallen, and these are what we – what I drink to, now that they are gone.”

Thor’s team knew the essence of what had happened in his absence. Odin’s death. Hela and Asgard. Sakaar. That first, fateful meeting with Thanos.

The way that Loki had sacrificed himself, in the end, rather than staying hidden and skirting Thanos’ judgment.

It had been brave. It had been foolish. And as much as Thor had always accused his brother of lacking honor, there were moments where he felt he would give almost anything to go back and force Loki to weasel his way out of consequences just one more time.

Though Thor did not expect his brother’s end to earn him their absolution, let alone their understanding.

“There was no body to be found,” he said, eventually, nearly whispering. He did not look at Rogers. He could not. “It was gone when I returned after the battle. And, in its stead, I have nothing of his to place in the vessel.”

Rogers looked unconvinced. They had, after all, seen this before.

“Is he really…?”

“Yes.” Thor nearly answered too quickly for civility. “Or at least I suspect–”

Thor sighed, pausing as the wind coming off the lake tangled in his hair. It would have blown it off his shoulders, once, before the last few weeks.

On Asgard, his people had been known to cut their hair in mourning.

It sometimes felt as if his had been cut as a prophecy.

“In truth … I am not certain. That Loki yet lives is a possibility, even if I feel in my heart that this time, it is not so. I am trying not to place much hope in doubt, yet it seems I cannot help myself. Even after everything he has wrought.”

Rogers stood from the stump, walking quickly around the boat to catch the end of the plank that Thor had left dragging in the sand.

“Here,” he said, lifting it up until it was even with the end Thor held before the boat, “let me help.”

Thor suspected it was not only the boat of which Rogers spoke.

But … what was several years for humans was only a blink in the lifespan of one of the Æsir, and between one blink and the next, Thor had lost everything he had ever truly loved. He was lonely, if he was honest. And the time he had spent losing had taught him much of the value of other people.

A younger Thor might have brushed him off, said he was fine and went and killed something in a brutal manner just to prove it.

That Thor had been gone for years, now.

“Thank you,” Thor said, at length. He hefted his half higher, moving it so it might be slotted into place. “Here, I will show you how to do it, if you wish to assist me. These boats are not meant to be built alone.”

“Of course. You don’t even have to ask.” Somehow, beneath the dirt and the exhaustion, despite the pain Thor knew Rogers was suppressing even as he tried to help Thor through his own, that smile was still infectious, and warm as midday in the height of summer.

They worked together for the rest of the afternoon and on into the evening. And when night fell, Rogers stayed with him still, helping him cover the ship properly to keep it from the elements.

He seemed to find the process of building cathartic, and through the afternoon Thor found himself trading childhood stories of Loki for ones of the man Rogers had called Bucky – James Barns, the one who had grown up with Rogers, been turned against him, and finally returned stable and almost whole only to fall to ashes in the wake of Thanos’ attack.

He did his best not to draw parallels between the two. Barns’ villainy had been largely unwilling, after all.

But it was always hard to lose a friend. Harder still when you had spent so much of your life at their side, when they were your brother regardless of the blood that ran through your veins.

It was different, though perhaps no more difficult, to mourn one who had been more than a friend. More than a brother, if Thor was reading Rogers’ demeanor correctly.

He could not say he did not understand.

Eventually, once the boat was secured, they made the trek back together. No more words passed between them, but no more needed to.

If, when the exited the forest, the Dora Milaje guarding the barrier was surprised to see Thor with company, she did not show it.

Her name was Zenani, as Thor had learned after asking to be let through the barrier so many times, and though he sensed she mourned the battle’s losses still, over the weeks he had taken to building the ship, she seemed to have found a peace within herself. An acceptance, even if she was still determined to do everything in her power to reverse what Thanos’ had wrought, if the time and possibility came.

For the first time since he had started making these walks, Thor could almost empathize.

Their makeshift-turned-permanent camp was just settling down by the time they crossed its borders, nodding at Rhodey where he stood guard. He still patrolled at odd hours of the night, still looked over his shoulder for something that was never there, but whatever Wakanda’s doctors had done was working, and he had slowly begun to walk once more without Stark’s braces.

The others had seen no such successes in the recent weeks, but the sliver of good news was all it had taken for the arguments to abate in favor of focused, determined planning. There were fewer of them now, given their losses, and their abilities had shifted since they had last fought together.

They would need to coordinate for the coming battles, to work as a team.

At the quinjet, Rogers broke off, heading to where Romanov and Rocket – not truly a rabbit, as Thor had learned after example pictures and a good deal of overly inventive death threats – sat discussing … something. Knowing the participants, Thor suspected it involved a debate on the merits of efficiency versus style when it came to dispatching their foes.

 

He was not certain if Rogers was really as appalled as his interruption implied, or if he was merely acting as such because it amused him. Though Thor supposed it did not matter, so long as the five of them – minus Banner, who was still working tirelessly with Shuri – were at least on speaking terms.

By the time he found the inflatable thing Romanov swore was a better field bed than anything else she’d ever bothered to pack before, he was tired enough to collapse into it, crushing his face against its overly smooth material.

It felt like a century had passed since the last time he slept so deeply.

 

**…**

 

The second time was quieter. More somber.

That time, he had held Loki in his arms as he died. He had wept over his body.

And then he had left his brother on the cold, dark dust of Svartalfheim, because there had been no time for the rites. It had been gone when he returned.

Again, the realm banded together to build a ship. They waited just long enough to observe Frigga’s own _sjaund –_ she was a woman of fortitude. Of magic, and of knowledge in all that would come to pass. Had she seen this in her loom? Had the Norns told her she would die and the _sjaund_ would come to pass but what she would have passed down could not go to her favored son?

Because Loki was dead. And they still did not have a body, but Thor had held it it pale and lifeless, clutching it to his chest.

The last time they had held this rite, no one had known for certain. They could not have known Loki had found Thanos and been made master of the Chitauri. They could not have known what had happened between the Bifröst and New York to turn Loki in on himself, sharpening his sense of superiority and his inclination towards chaos until he was a weapon of his own making.

More of one, at any rate.

Again they filled his body-less ship with useless, stupid things that Loki would have no use for in death. The green and gold was right, but the rest was not. An insult, almost, to get it so wrong twice.

Thor took one look at the boat and marched straight to the throne room. He raged before their father, hurling accusations of _this was your fault_ and _how can you know your own son so little?_ Yet, Odin only raised an eyeless eyebrow and avoided the question with a sharp, distracting retort that Thor still could not quite recall.

It had not truly been Odin, of course. But he learned that later.

Thor stormed out, and he did not again see the man who he thought was his father until just before the rite when Thor demanded, once more, to see the ship.

With the attendants gone, the room was empty but for the ship, myriad candles, and the quiet, stooped form of Odin as he stared into the empty vessel.

When Thor carried forward his own grave goods, Odin did not stop him. Though he did give him an odd, inscrutable look, when Thor lay down the light, leather armor that Loki had preferred over plate and a cask of good mead worth more than a well made, enchanted sword.

In the ceremony that followed, it was Thor who pushed the ship out into Asgard’s waters and who, once more, struck it with lightning as it passed beyond, into the waiting stars.

There were no tears, this time.

He waited. He mourned. And on the night that followed the seventh day, Asgard once more observed the _sjaund_ , though Loki had no inheritance to pass on and was only the adopted, second son of a man who had seemed uncaring throughout the rite.

But Thor insisted.

They feasted. They drank. _Thor_ drank – too much perhaps. And he found himself staggering back to his chambers, one arm slung around Sif just long enough for her to push him off and onto his own floor, closing the door almost on his face.

The room had been dimmed, candles guttering low in their sconces as they cast a strange, warm dream light across the whole of it. Drink and grief disoriented him, clinging to his thoughts and his movements like lead, and he found that when a slim, well-manicured hand tipped his chin up from where it had nestled against his chest, it was not even unexpected.

His brother was dead.

His brother was not dead.

His brother _was_ dead but had cursed Thor with his draugr and mocked him with how unfairly lifelike, how warm, he still seemed.

Later, he would not know if Loki had visited him in a vision or in the flesh, but he found he did not care. And if once he woke, someone had asked him if his brother was really, undeniably, _irrevocably_ dead –

Thor did not know.

He was beginning to suspect he would never truly know.

 

**…**

 

Though the boat was finished sooner, Thor waited until the night before the team was set to leave for New York to conduct the final rite.

The Wakandans had been more than generous, and the former Avengers had done what they could to assist their relief efforts, but it was time. Bruce would stay behind, where he would be most useful, but the rest of them were needed elsewhere.

Midgard was recovering, slowly, piece by piece, and it fell to them to do their part. To help where they could. And they would start where they had the most presence and reestablish the New York facility as their base of operations.

But that had yet to come.

On their last day in Wakanda, Thor picked his way down to the lakeshore for a final time. When he reached the water, he found that, as if in anticipation, the wind he carried with him had already blown back the tarp from the ship.

It only needed to be filled.

There were no daggers, this time. No spell books or honeyed mead. Asgard was gone and with it, most of everything Loki might have ever loved. He had been so full of love, once, though Thor was certain he had been the only one beside their mother to see it.

It had required a fair bit of searching, some digging through mostly obliterated SHIELD bases and more than a little creative use of Stormbreaker’s power. Yet in the end, he had located it within an old, battered safe full of Midgardian money, a handgun, and a deeply disconcerting number of eye patches.

Loki’s helmet from the battle for New York. Thor had silently cursed Nick Fury, wherever he might have been.

It had been there this whole time. Gilded and horned, the thing was just as ridiculous as Thor had remembered it. It had seen many design changes over the millennia, but it remained, in essence, quintessentially Loki.

He placed it in the belly of the ship with a gentleness approaching reverence, folding a swath of green silk from Wakanda’s markets beneath it. Its smooth metal caught the last of the sunset, absorbing the dying light like liquid gold.

Loki would have laughed to see him like this, Thor thought. But Loki wasn’t here.

With a final, mournful look, he stepped away from the side of the boat. With his strength, it was easy enough to angle the ship towards the distant, unseen shore, pushing upon the stern until the ship’s bow pulled free of fine-ground rocks lining the lakebed and began to float on choppy water. Thor pushed until he stood, thigh deep in cold, wind-churned water, holding on to the funeral barge of his brother for just a few moments more.

There was symbolism in this. The weight of tradition, of millennia.

One hand gripped desperately to the ship as Thor brought the other to his face, fingers stilling at the wetness there.

Before, he had never let himself cry at this sort of letting go.

But the sun was sinking, the curve of it nearly touching the horizon where its light set the water ablaze. The sky behind Thor had darkened enough to see stars. From the tree line, he sensed he was being watched. But he paid his teammates no mind.

With a final, strong push, Thor gave his brother’s ship momentum enough to move. There was no sail, but the wind around him began to blow, shifting the current to carry the boat onward and away from shore. Away from him, floating freely toward the place where the lake and sky became indistinguishable.

Over head, storm clouds began to grow, hanging low and heavy above the lake, but for a thin line of light left down their center, tracing the path of the ship.

Thor had not lied to Rocket when he told him that this time, it felt like the end.

It was the sort of loss that Thor knew would never feel quite real. Even now, part of him whispered that it was another trick, an illusion cast for some unfathomable, cruel purpose.

He raised Stormbreaker, calling upon the darkening sky and the power in his bones to summon a flash of lightning through the air. It struck the boat with a bright fury that carved its duplicate in Thor’s vision, echoing with each blink. Sparks flew. The boat caught fire. And for the third time in his life, Thor burned his brother in spirit, if not in body.

Yet still, the doubt remained.

Maybe someday, Thor would see him again.

In Valhalla, if such a place could even exist when Ragnarök had come and gone, or else trapped between realms, strung up and screaming at the venom dripping from a massive serpent coiled tightly above him.

Or perhaps, years from now, once Midgard had righted itself once more, Thor would walk into a Starbucks in downtown Manhattan and see Loki perched at a high table, sipping unnecessarily complicated coffee like nothing had ever happened because his brother had always been a bit of a prick like that.

And maybe, on that day, Loki would see him and smile that wry, smug smile of his. Maybe he would say, “Were you worried, brother? You would have done well to trust me a little more.”

Maybe he would only complain a little when Thor huged him, crushing him tight to his chest to keep him close while he whispered “I missed you,” over and over against the curve of his shoulder, burying the last of his tears in the dark curls of that ridiculous, too-long hair of which his brother had always been so proud.

Or maybe that was only the lie that Thor told himself, like a mantra trapped in the confines of his body, echoing against the hollow chambers of his heart.

Yet, beyond where Thor stood, thigh deep in sunlit water, the current carried his brother’s ship to the horizon where burning sea met burning sky.

And though Gungnir had been lost with their father and Thor had never been able to conjure an illusion or shift so much as a dinner plate, for a single, blinding moment the ship seemed to lift up above the water, slipping beyond the waves to become a speck of darkness against the golden dusk that, as if by seiðr or some unknown magic, threw off the bonds of gravity.

And rose into the sun.

 


	2. Chapter 2

It was nearly dusk when he bid the Guardians farewell at the edge of the compound.

The last time he had seen it – all that broken, twisted metal shining dully in the early-morning dawn – it had held nothing but regret. A handful of bright, joyous years reduced to naught more than rubble rising from ankle-deep ash.

It had been rebuilt in the three years since he’d left Midgard to find himself again.

“You sure you’re gonna be ok?” Rocket’s voice pulled him out of it, though not so sharply that he forgot to look down to find the voice’s origin.

He raised an eyebrow. Or, what passed for an eyebrow on a raccoon.

“Verily.” Thor smiled down at him. It was not his first smile in the ten years since he had buried the edge of Stormbreaker deep in Thanos’ shoulder, but he felt it was one of his best yet.

The relearning of joy was not a quick process, nor a kind one. But there were many sorrows that Thor had made his peace with, and today he felt particularly unburdened.

“Yeah, alright.” Something undercut Rocket’s voice. He shifted uncomfortably between clawed feet. “At least it’ll be quiet ‘round here for freakin’ once. You an’ Quill got enough hot air between the two of ya that if you’d stayed any longer, sleep would become a statistical improbability.”

If Thor hadn’t know better, he might have said that his small companion looked anxious at the thought of Thor leaving after so many perilous adventures.

Aloud, he said no such thing. He had no desire for Rocket to attempt to reclaim his eye, most likely by force.

“You done out there?” A voice yelled from inside the ship. Quill, from the sound of it. “We’ve gotta get a move on if we wanna leave sometime this year!”

Rocket glared back, over his shoulder.

“Shut it, Quill! Some of us are actually gonna miss having our overpowered _leader_ around.”

A noise emanated from the open door of the ship that might have been a response, but to Thor it merely sounded as if Quill were screaming incomprehensibly.

Thor smiled. Despite Rocket’s words, they had never truly decided upon a leader. The rest of the Guardians still insisted that the position would remain unfilled until a true victor was determined by knife fight.

In truth, by the time he and Quill had mentally and physically pulled themselves together enough to _actually_ fight one another, they’d decided against it. In many ways, the ambiguity suited the Guardians far better than any true hierarchy ever would.

“Eh,” Rocket said, turning back to him. “He’ll get over it.”

“I would expect nothing less.”

The conversation was drawing to a close, but Thor – and Rocket, he suspected – had no idea how to end it. Three years was nearly inconsequential in the lifetime of one of the Æsir, but he felt the pain of leaving sharply all the same.

“I’m only gonna ask one more time,” Rocket said, “but you’re _sure?”_

Thor knelt down. It had taken nearly an entire year to learn to do it in a way that Rocket would not find patronizing, but he had committed himself fully to it as thoroughly as he had once set about learning the ways of the other Avengers.

He placed a hand on Rocket’s shoulder. It seemed overlarge in comparison.

“I am certain.” In the distance, people from the facility had begun to gather. It was not often they hosted ships from _this_ far afield. “Besides, I will still be on Midgard if you have need of me.”

Rocket stiffened but did not throw off his hand. “Whatever. We got along just fine before you, an’ we’ll get along just fine after. Better, even.”

Thor had known him long enough to hear the sadness in that particular brusque tone. He only smiled.

“Mayhaps.” Thor glanced to the ship where the rest of the Guardians – sans Drax, who appeared to be holding Quill back from doing something ill-advised – stood watching. He waved to them.

“May your travels be fruitful, and may you be victorious in battle!” he shouted across the distance.

Drax nodded in confirmation. Nebula looked unimpressed. Mantis gave him a small but enthusiastic wave.

Quill looked about ready to fight someone – probably Thor – until a single, green figure emerged from the ship. She stepped forward, placing a hand on Quill’s shoulder. At Gamora’s unimpressed look, he shrunk back, running a hand through the back of his hair in a gesture that looked to be mildly embarrassed.

Convincing her past self to travel with them had been a _truly_ harrowing quest, but it had healed more than a few rifts. Even some of Thor’s, though if only by proxy of seeing others reunited with their companions.

He looked to the compound once more. The assembled people had formed a crowd. Most were scientists and technicians from the facility, but among them the thought he saw a few costumed heroes unfamiliar to him.

The new Avengers initiative must have expanded in recent years. To his surprise, he found himself looking forward to meeting them.

With a final handshake – Rocket’s tiny paw dwarfed by his hand – he bid them a final wish of good travels, good enemies, and the bounty of the universe before them.

Then he began the long, quiet walk to the compound. Most of the crowd had dispersed by that point, their curiosity sated for the time being. That was fine by Thor; fewer eyes on him meant he could slip away more easily, taking a longer, circuitous route.

In his time away from Midgard, one of the facility’s training fields had been turned to a memorial of sorts. The one that had stood there before – the one commemorating those who had been lost to Thanos’ first snap – no longer stood. No need, when all those who had been turned to ash had returned to them.

In its place stood two statues. Bronze, polished to a shine in the setting sun.

They had taken extra care with the likenesses, Thor thought. It was nearly uncanny to see his former teammates staring back at him, smiling proudly at the victory that had been so hard won.

They stood closely, much closer than he had normally seen Stark and Romanov standing in life, but he felt that it suited them and the nature of their sacrifices. At their feet lay grave goods, open to the elements for all that the Midgardians must have been replacing them regularly. An odd tradition, to be sure, but after all that Thor had seen and experienced, he was hardly one to judge.

Romanov would have hated it, he was certain. The few times he had seen her well and truly drunk, she had said that she did what she did out of necessity, out of repentance. A statue risked giving the wrong impression. Nonetheless, there were flowers laid at the base of it. A pair of cartridges for her Widow’s Bite joined them, more technologically advanced than anything he had seen Romanov carry in her time. A longbow made in the Midgardian style that seemed to have been sitting there for quite some time, and a half-drunk bottle of expensive-looking vodka that had been there for significantly less.

Stark would have found something wrong with his statue, always able to find flaws in what he had not made with his own hands. More than a few contraptions that looked to be of Stark’s design lay on the statue’s base, intermixed with a few that seemed almost childish in their conception. Thor had a guess as to their origin; none of them would have been surprised had Stark’s daughter begun to follow in his footsteps. Beside them was a picture – framed and signed by Stark, it seemed – of him and the small child who Thor had dressed as a spider, vanquishing foes on the battlefield. He had seemed to have great potential for one so young.

The base of this statue, too, had been covered in flowers. Enough of them that it was difficult to tell where the offerings left for one of them ended and the offerings for the other began. Perhaps they were for both of them, with no specific preference for one or the other. That is what Thor, hoped, at least. 

Thor had no flowers to leave. No alcohol, no weapons, no trinkets. Except for Stormbreaker, everything he had acquired he had left with the Guardians, in case they had need of it. Instead, he sunk to his knees and offered a prayer similar to one that the Æsir would offer their own fallen. Guidance to the afterlife. For those fallen in battle, a plea that their spirits be carried to the halls of Valhalla to fight once more in the end times.

Thor had seen the end times twice. He had survived Ragnarök. He had seen Death in the face of his sister. In Thanos. And, against all odds, he had survived it where his people, his friends, his _family_ had not.

The thought was less heart-rending than it had once been, though it still stung all the same.

He resolved to find something suitable for Romanov and Stark both, to be left when he returned here. And he _would_ return. Though it was not the custom of his people, the monuments to his fallen friends would not be left wanting.

A tear escaped his good eye as he stood. Thor let it fall. It was important to let these things run their course.

With a final nod to the statues, he set off. It was fully night by the time he reached the facility, and the crowd has dissipated entirely.

Yet, when he reached for the main door, it opened before him. Beyond it stood Banner, and, as odd as it was to see him both green and retaining his senses, it was truly good to behold him once more.

“We were wondering when you would come in,” Banner said, closing the door behind the two of them.

“As was I,” Thor responded. He followed Banner deeper into the facility, through pools of golden, iridescent light that spilled out into the darkness beyond the foyer’s windows. “It is good to see you, my friend. Though there were others I felt I must see first.”

Banner hummed in understanding, not offering commentary. Thor was grateful for it. In Asgard he had felt no discomfort at discussions of the deeds of his fallen friends, at speculation of how they fared in the glorious mead-halls of the afterlife, escorted there by radiant Valkyrior.

Now, with only a fraction of Asgard’s people surviving and his faith in the prophecies of his youth shaken to his very core, Thor could not bring himself to speak on it quite yet.

One day, perhaps. But that day was not today.

“It's still good to have you here," Banner said. One of his large, green hands pushed against a door, opening it to reveal one of the communal rooms that the Avengers had treated as shared living space during their time here. “After traveling with those guys, I’m sure you’ve got quite a few stories.”

Thor smiled, taking a seat at the room’s main table. “More than a few. Though their telling would take far more than a single free night.”

Banner pulled over a chair from the head of the table. It was larger than the others, built to support a sitting Hulk.

“Well, it turns out that surviving the end of the world gives you quite a few free nights. So, by all means, tell away. We have the time.”

Thor smiled. This one was, perhaps, even better than the last.

…

He stayed in the Avengers facility for a month before the message came. Banner only raised an eyebrow when Thor relayed its contents.

“Tell her I said hi,” he said, only turning back to his experiment after securing a promise from Thor that if he returned, he would do so with _forewarning_ of any particular guests. No need for the facility to go into an unnecessary lockdown. 

And thus, promise made, Thor journeyed out once more.

With Stormbreaker, the trip from upstate New York to New Asgard took no longer than a whispered word and the blink of an eye.

The axe carried him to the town’s center. Though, when Thor looked around, he found it nearly unrecognizable. Brunnhilde had not been lying about making changes; in his absence, the technologies of his people had flourished once again. Buildings rose up around him, golden and gleaming, so unlike the fishing village he had left behind. It was nothing near what their construction and their seiðr had achieved in Asgard, but it struck a chord in Thor’s heart all the same.

He was welcome still, he found when he asked a passerby for directions. Given the depths of his sadness at the time he had left and his neglect of the town during his short rule, Thor was honestly surprised.

The path from town to the house – fortress, more like – overlooking it was a short one. There was a steep, winding path between them, but in the intervening years Thor had regained his self-assurance and his musculature, both.

The trail was easy, now. And the burden of the climb no longer left him breathless.

By the time he reached the top, the fortress’ main door was open. Light poured out, bright even against the daylight, silhouetting the form of the foremost (and only) of New Asgard’s Valkyrior.

“Took you long enough,” Brunnhilde said, stepping forward to smack him on the shoulder.

He let her, not that he had ever truly been capable of _stopping_ her, and he didn’t resist as she pulled him into something that resembled more of a headlock than a hug. He did not mind it. It was good to see her, even after everything.

When he pulled back, she was grinning. There was something devious in it. “Like the changes?” she asked, letting the grin fall into a smirk. 

“Indeed. New Asgard looks magnificent”

She looked at him, silently prompting him to continue.

Thor sighed.

“I admit, it is better than I could have done.”

At that, Brunnhilde, threw her head back, laughing. If in his youth Thor had known that the Valkyries enjoyed tormenting him this much, he would not have wanted to join their ranks.

Thor pouted. Brunnhilde smacked the side of his face this time, but lightly.

“Being honest, I can’t take all the credit. We’ve had our people working with that genius princess we fought with. Call it a technology exchange or something.” She looked behind her, into the waiting fortress.

“Come on, though. We stay out here any longer and people are gonna start asking questions.” Brunnhilde narrowed her eyes furtively. “And this isn’t exactly public knowledge. Which, let me remind you, is only because I like the thought of you owing me a favor." 

With the door closed behind them, Thor placed his hands on her shoulders, looking Brunnhilde right in the eyes.

“Thank you,” he said, genuinely. For the first time in a long time, hope had swelled in his heart when he received her message.

She looked uncomfortable with his sincerity, but she allowed the contact for longer than she probably would have in the years previous. 

Eventually, she sighed. “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” she said, turning away and out of his grasp.

“How did…?” Thor began to ask.

“I have no idea.” Brunnhilde cut him off. “And after all the fucked up shit your ‘Avengers’ pulled with time, I don’t really want to know.”

She waited, staring him down for nearly a full minute before she finally relented. “My best guess is some sort of seiðr, probably. He’s good at that.”

It _would_ answer some questions… nearly as many as it would raise.

But Brunnhilde looked to have had enough of him, for the moment.

“He’s back there,” she gestured to a hallway leading away from the main entrance. “Just get him out of here before he burns my house down or something.”

“That is a promise I would readily make, had I any ability to control him.”

She scoffed. “Fair enough.”

At a final shoo-ing motion from Brunnhilde, Thor followed the hallway back into the recesses of the fortress. House. Whatever she was calling it these days. The hallway made a sharp right before turning into a single, steep staircase and another hallway at the top of it. 

He did not even bother to look in any of the second hallway’s side rooms.

He did not have to.

The last doorway was open, sunlight pouring out of it. When he finally reached it, the transition from the dark hall to wide, thrown-open windows was enough to set Thor blinking against it, holding a hand up to shield his good eye.

When his vision cleared, he was still standing in the doorway. But now, he could see the room before him. A simple bed was tucked into the corner, its sheets and blankets aligned to a degree of fastidiousness very unlike Brunnhilde.

There was a small fireplace, a table and a set of chairs. A chess set, mid-game, sat on the table’s surface. A single piece hovered above the board, held in between pale fingers. 

And at the table, staring intently at the chess set, sat Loki.

The last few years and, potentially, death had not been kind to him.

Dark circles – darker than normal, at any rate – ringed his eyes. His hair sat lankly, without its usual luster, though the black of it was still dark enough to absorb the window’s sunlight.

He looked gaunt, as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks.

At Thor’s entrance, he looked up. Thor could not tell if his startled expression was an affectation, or if he truly had not heard Thor coming.

And for once in their long, long lives, words seemed to abandon him.

Loki’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

Thor waited. Standing as still as he would to coax a wild animal out of hiding. 

Minutes passed.

Finally, Loki put down the chess piece.

He stood from the chair, pushing away from the table.

And immediately toppled over.

Thor rushed forward, reaching out to catch him before he could hit the ground.

From his arms, Loki looked up at him. Annoyance and reluctant gratitude warred on his features as he narrowed his eyes.

“Brother,” he said, at long last. In that one word, his voice was a far cry from resonant. His demeanor short of silver-tongued.

“You absolute bastard,” Thor responded, voice already choked with tears. “You _miserable_ …”

“I know,” Loki said, “I know.”

Thor buried his face in his brother’s shoulder, tears falling into Loki’s dark hair.

And, against all of Thor’s expectation, Loki wrapped arms around him and hugged him back.

They could have knelt like that for minutes, or for hours. Thor did not much care. His brother was here, _safe_ , in his arms. The sun shone down on them, around them, pooling on the dark wood floor so unlike anything they had grown up in.

“Do not leave,” Thor mumbled through his tears, words blocked by hair and fabric and atrophied muscle. “Do you hear me? _Do not leave._ Not again. I could not stand it.”

Loki laughed a quiet, watery sort of laugh, but Thor was too caught up in everything to see if his brother was also crying.

“I don’t plan to,” Loki said. His arms were trembling. If it was with weakness or with emotion, Thor could not tell. Though he swore he felt a smile against the edge of his shoulder. 

In his lifetime, Thor had burned three boats for his brother. Two in Asgard, and one in Wakanda.

But here, now. His brother was once again alive.

_Loki_ _was_ _alive._

And Thor - 

Thor would burn a hundred boats if it kept his brother coming back to him every time.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know how I said that Infinity War fucked me up? Well, Endgame also fucked me up, but differently. 
> 
> One year later irl (seven years later in fic time), Thor gets a happy ending. Maybe not the one that he (or I) would have wanted, but something more than the movie gave him.

**Author's Note:**

> Infinity War fucked me up.
> 
> I basically sat down and started writing this immediately after seeing it, and honestly this thing was only supposed to be like three thousand words long but it's also the only reason I'm not a complete mess right now.
> 
> The title of the fic is from the same poem as the quote at the top, so if you're interested, go check out ‘The Evening of the Mind’ by Donald Justice.
> 
> Or, if you feel like screaming with me about what happened (or if you're just up for some fandom weirdness in general), I can be found [here](https://vellaphoria.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr. Come and say hi :)


End file.
